There is not much that has evaded Rafa Benitez during a career that has taken him from the Istanbul to the Bernabeu, collecting trophies across three of the most competitive leagues in Europe.

One thing has: control. And it is that, as much as the dormant potential of United, the lucrative contract and the ability to marry personal and professional responsibilities for the next three years, that is drawing him closer to committing to the major rebuild job on Tyneside.

Newcastle arrived at a crossroads after relegation was confirmed on Wednesday and so far, it looks like Mike Ashley has chosen the right route.

His initial conversation with Benitez cut through the uncertainty about Newcastle’s position: he was prepared to rip up the flawed model and hand Benitez the keys to the castle. It was as positive as Benitez or any Newcastle fan could have wished for.

After six years of doing things his way, this is nothing short of seismic for Newcastle if Ashley follows it through.

What that means in practice is a re-drawing of the power lines. Graham Carr, who has offered to step down before, is set to depart the board that was convened last season. It’s felt a refresh is needed – Carr himself may have been bruised by some of the criticism that has come his way and while Benitez has not demanded his departure, it now looks all-but inevitable.

So Benitez will get what he did not have at Liverpool in the latter stages and what eluded him at Valencia and Real Madrid: full and unfettered control over transfers and recruitment.

After his experience at the Bernabeu, when he diluted his management style to try and accommodate the wishes of the omnipotent Florentino Perez, this will be a blessed relief. Football people like to talk, misty-eyed, about ‘projects’ but Newcastle really does feel like one to Benitez: the manager walking in at a point where Ashley’s hard, practical and sometimes muddle-headed cost-cutting has made the club financially self-sufficient but utterly short as a sporting institution.

As desperate as their situation is – and they have just been relegated in a year when the gravy train arrives – they are not completely devoid of hope.

So with Carr potentially in the departure lounge, what can we expect from a Benitez-led recruitment revamp?

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Newcastle already have a global reach but Benitez, who has always attempted to be ‘hands-on’ with recruitment, comes with a huge database of players.

Paco Herrera, a former coach under Benitez turned scout when he was at Liverpool, spoke of the Spaniard’s “database with information on more than 10,000 players”.

“We started incorporating people from one country or another (and) as time went on Rafa proposed to create a personal database. That’s where every day all the scouts are putting information on all the players they are watching - I would say it would be closer to 14,000 players (now).”

Benitez embraces technology. Before the days of Wyscout he was rigged up two huge satellite dishes at Melwood so that he could watch football from all over the world – making sure than he and his scouts poured over hundreds of hours of footage of what he called “the big 12” – the top European and South American leagues.

He also surrounds himself with as many opinions as possible. Although he may take the ultimate call, he told scouts that he welcomed their opinions – even if they contradicted his own on a player.

Herrera estimated that on average a player would be watched “in the flesh” between five and ten times before a decision was taken. In these days when clubs are trying to do things differently, the idea of getting eyeballs on players – Benitez’s way – feels like a more traditional approach.

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One name sticks out: Frank McParland.

A diminutive figure but an impressive one, the Liverpool-born scout was involved in the deals that saw Reina, Alonso and Mascherano sign for the Reds. And he also played a key role in persuading Raheem Sterling to leave QPR and join Liverpool.

He was in charge of a team of 30 global scouts that criss-crossed the globe. After heading up recruitment he was charged with revolutionising an Academy structure that – despite FA Youth Cup wins in 2006 and 2007 – was not seen as fit for purpose and enjoyed more success there.

Currently with Glasgow Rangers, there is a sense that he may be open to a return to England – despite the Ibrox club clinching promotion back to the SPL. His name would be an obvious one to replace Carr, but he's not in Benitez's thoughts at the moment.

Eduardo Macia was at Anfield from 2006 to 2010 under Benitez. A former Valencia player, he was a technical director at the club with Benitez before moving to Anfield to join him.

Again, the emphasis was on a global network. Macia explained to Liverpool’s official website in 2006 how they scouted players: “We have scouts located all over the world. They live in the country that they cover. That’s the way we like it to be. If you are based in England and just travel over to watch the player you don’t get the full picture. It’s easy to see if a player is performing well or not.

“We want to know everything about the player, not just how he performs. For example, Lucas Leiva, our scout watched him and asked lots of different people about him. Then we spent two weeks in Brazil watching him training as well as playing.

“From that we hope to be certain about a player. Of course you can still make a mistake but this method reduces the chances. Sometimes even when you know everything you can still get it wrong. There are lots of factors to consider, such as language, wife or girlfriend not settling in a new country. You can still get it wrong, but we hope to make the least number of mistakes.

“And it’s not only a system we use when signing first team players, we also use it for bringing in younger lads. If you are 17 or 23 it doesn’t matter. If your family is not okay or your mentality isn’t right then it won’t work. So we spend a lot of time gathering lots of info on possible signings.”

At Real Madrid he had Pedro Campos as head of scouting – but recruitment policy was essentially dictated from above. The Cordoba-born former professional is currently unemployed, barring penning the occasional column for the local ‘paper.

Another member of Benitez’s entourage is Owen Brown, former Vauxhall Motors manager who became a key part of the manager’s entourage. The best way of describing him is as an influential assistant – doing the odd bit of scouting but essentially employed as a general ‘fixer’ for Benitez.

Benitez's past record

No club can claim a 100% success rate in the transfer market, and handed the reins to Benitez is no guarantee of a perfect record on recruitment.

At Liverpool he was the man who signed Fernando Torres – but he also brought Jermaine Penant to Anfield. He was not able to coax the best out of Robbie Keane, despite spending £20million on him.

There was inevitably a Spanish flavour to his recruits. In his first three years he signed 17 players from La Liga, but believed that a native, local core to his side was key.

He surrounded himself with Liverpool-born advisors and was counselled wisely on the importance of incorporating players who understood the culture of the club. His re-signing of Robbie Fowler was hailed as a masterstroke for the galvanising effect it had on the squad.

Overall – with a caveat – he was considered a success. “I’m not sure that he would be one of the very best when it comes to spotting a player – in the 2005/6 season he signed 15 or 16 players and a lot of them disappeared without a trace really,” Neil Jones of the Liverpool Echo says.

“It tended to be in the early years that he’d bring in a lot of signings, there would be an influx of new players and that sometimes meant the quality was diluted.

“But you have to assess him by the five or six that paid off from that crop, and they were brilliant players. He was the man responsible for bringing in Pepe Reina, Agger, Mascherano, Alonso, Torres, Kuyt, Skrtel.”

For Jones, the distinction came when Benitez was signing players under the £5million mark. They didn’t often pay off – over that mark he generally came up trumps.

Crucially, it was the players he missed out on because of internal Anfield politics that caused most regret.

He told the club to buy Aaron Ramsey and Theo Walcott, and asked Liverpool to broker a deal for a young Gareth Bale when he left Southampton. Most crucially he had targeted Gareth Barry with the intention of working him in tandem with Keane. When that didn’t come off, Liverpool’s plans suffered a setback that cost them dearly. Keane played only 15 league games before returning to Spurs.

“Liverpool lost the league by four points that season. If he’d got the player he wanted in the first place, it might have been different,” Jones reflects.

Overall, he improved the quality of the squad substantially over six years. “Liverpool were much better when he left than when he took over – the squad was far superior and that is what counts in the end,” he said.

What Benitez looks for

For Rafa Benitez, personality is almost as important as quality. When he gets that, he will back a player to the hilt.

Anfield failure Penant once railed at the “obsessive” Benitez and his thirst for control.

“When I was on his touchline all I could hear was him giving me directions and I would think ‘Why don’t you just put the batteries in and turn me into a robot?’

“Sometimes I just wanted to play my natural game but there were so many instructions - how to go forward, how to defend,” he complained.

Penant saw it as a problem for Benitez, discipline is the key in any player who arrives.

His Continental scout Mauro Pederzoli said in 2007: “There are simple but unbreakable rules that Benitez passes on to his scouts.

“Benitez doesn’t want headline-hogging players but discipline. He avoids small players and ‘fancy dans’. He looks for ‘fair and strong’ players. Put together those players and you get Liverpool. It was a team that tops the fair play league, they had no player sent off in the league.”

It sounds as if Benitez would never gamble on a Remy Cabella or – worse – a Florian Thauvin. And indeed his former head talent spotter Macia emphasised “mentality” as a key factor.

“We want strong players who can think for themselves and don’t need to be told what to do,” he said.

“They are clever guys who can make their own decisions on the pitch and help you win games. Mentality of the player is the most important thing. There are probably a million players with quality in the world. That’s not enough. I don’t want someone who is fantastic in September and November. I want someone who is fantastic all year round.”

At Liverpool, Benitez took a two-pronged approach and he would surely opt to do the same at Newcastle.

While he wanted to improve the first XI, he was also intent on improving the quality of the reserves, bringing in 16 to 20 years who could push the senior squad.

“We are building for the future here,” Macia said of Benitez’s early approach.

“We’ve brought in a lot of young players in the last few years. Guys who are 16, 17, 18 years old and they all have the mentality we want. That’s why they won the reserve league last season.”

The idea would be to get to a point where Liverpool only needed to bring in one or two players a summer because the natural progression of those under the first team would ensure added options for the senior squad. Given the lack of depth in the Newcastle squad, that would need to happen at United too.